"You are mocking me. It is only fiends who torment their victims. You
are my husband, and should know better!"

"Rachael Closs, control yourself!"

"I am not Rachael Closs!" cried the woman, fiercely. "You would not have
treated her so. It is Lady Hope you are putting to torture. Oh, Norton!
what have I done to you? What have I done to you that you should mock me
so?"

"I wish to save my child--to save myself."

"Well, is that all? She shall never speak to Hepworth again. Yes, what
is my brother, or anybody in the world, compared to one smile from my
husband?"

"And you will help me to reconcile Clara to that which must be?"

"I will do anything, everything that you wish, only do not leave me
again."

"But I must sometimes go out."

"And I cannot go with you. Rachael Closs is not good enough for your
high-born friends. Lady Carset has put her ban on your wife, and the
nobility of England accept it. But for this I might have been the
companion of your visits, the helpmate of your greatness--for I have the
power. I could have done so much, so much in this great world of yours,
but that old woman would not let me. It is cruel! it is cruel! You
would have loved me now as you did at first, but for her."

Lord Hope took Rachael's hand in his.

"Ah, Rachael!" he said, "if you could but understand the love which can
neither be cherished nor cast away, which pervades a whole life, only to
disturb it! Between you and me must ever come the shadow of a woman we
cannot talk of, but who stands eternally between us two. Even in the
first days of our passionate delirium I felt this viperous truth
creeping under the roses with which we madly hoped to smother it. The
thought grew and grew, like a parasite upon the heart. It clung to mine,
bound it down, made it powerless. Oh, would to God the memory of that
one night could be lifted from my soul! The presence of your brother
here has brought it back upon me with terrible force. But, thank God, he
is gone!"

"Gone! What, my brother? Am I never to see him again?"

"Not unless you wish to drive your husband from his own house. I will
not be reminded, by any one connected with that night, that it was the
mad passion of our love which drove that most unhappy woman from her
home, her country, and, at last, into her grave!"

Rachael sat with her glittering eyes fastened on his face. She longed to
ask a question; but it seemed to freeze upon her lips. But, at last, she
spoke: